The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:

Piece-out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning th' accomplishment of many years

Into an hour-glass for the which supply,

:

Admit me chorus to this History ;5

Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray,

Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

[Exit.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-London. An Ante-chamber in the King's Palace.

Enter the Archbishop of CANTERBURY and the Bishop of ELY.

Cant. My lord, I'll tell you: That self1 bill is urged
Which in th' eleventh year of the last King's reign
Was like, and had indeed against us pass'd,

But that the scambling2 and unquiet time

5 That is, "admit me as chorus to this History." A chorus, in one sense of the term, is an interpreter; one who explains to the audience what might else be dark or unmeaning to them.— Supply, I take it, is here used in the sense of supplement or completion. So that "for the which supply" is equivalent to for the completing of which.

1 Self for self-same: a frequent usage.

2 The more common form of this word is scrambling.— Question, in the next line, is discussion or consideration.

Did push it out of further question.

Ely. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?
Cant. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possessions;

For all the temporal lands, which men devout
By testament have given to the Church,
Would they strip from us; being valued thus:
As much as would maintain, to the King's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars 3 and weak age,

Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil,
A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the King, besides,

A thousand pounds by th' year:4 thus runs the bill.
Ely. This would drink deep.

Cant.

Ely. But what prevention?

'Twould drink the cup and all.

Cant. The King is full of grace and fair regard,
And a true lover of the holy Church.

Ely. The courses of his youth promised it not.
Cant. The breath no sooner left his father's body,

But that his wildness, mortified in him,

Seem'd to die too; yea, at that very moment,
Consideration, like an angel, came,

And whipp'd th' offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise,

'T envelop and contain celestial spirits.

Never was such a sudden scholar made;

3 Lazars here means the same as in Paradise Lost, xi. 479: “A lazar

house it seem'd, wherein were laid numbers of all diseased."

4 This is taken almost verbatim from Holinshed.

Never came reformation in a flood,

With such a heady current, scouring faults;
Nor never hydra-headed wilfulness 5

So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,

As in this King.

Ely.

We 're blessed in the change. Cant. Hear him but reason in divinity,

And, all-admiring, with an inward wish

You would desire the King were made a prelate ;
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You'd say it hath been all-in-all his study;
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle render'd you in music;
Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine,6 is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears,
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences.
So that the art and practic part of life

Must be the mistress to his theoric:7

5 That is, a wilfulness with many heads, and which, like the hydra, as fast as the heads are cut off, puts forth new ones. So that "hydra-headed wilfulness" is but a strong expression for freakishness or waywardness; the character of one who, drifting before his whims, is ever on some new tack, or is 'every thing by turns, and nothing long."

6 The air is called a "charter'd libertine," probably because it has by Nature a charter of exemption from restraint, or a prescriptive right to blow when and where it will, and cares no more for a king than for a beggar.

7 He must have drawn his theory, digested his order and method of thought, from the art and practice of life, instead of shaping the latter by the rules and measures of the former: which is strange, since he has never been seen in the way either of learning the things in question by experience, or of digesting the fruits of experience into theory. Practic and theoric, or practique and theorique, were the old spelling of practice and theory.

Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,
Since his addiction was to courses vain;

His companies unletter'd, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.9

Ely. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality :

And so the Prince obscured his contemplation
Under the veil of wildness; 10 which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.11

Cant. It must be so; for miracles are ceased;
And therefore we must needs admit the means
How 12 things are perfected.

Ely.

But, my good lord,

How now for mitigation of this bill

Urged by the Commons? Doth his Majesty

8 Companies for companions. So in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, i. 1: "Turn away our eyes, to seek new friends and stranger companies."

9 Popularity meant familiarity with the common people, as well as popular favour or applause.

"

10 In Prince Henry's last speech, Act i. 2, 1 King Henry IV., he is represented as deliberately proposing this course to himself, for reasons therein stated. So of Julius Cæsar, the greatest name in history," as Merivale calls him, it is said that in his earlier years he concealed his tremendous energy and power of application under such an exterior of thoughtless dissipation, that he was set down as a mere young trifler not worth minding.

11 Crescive is the same as crescent, growing, or increasing. So in Hamlet, i. 3: "Nature, crescent, does not grow alone in thews and bulk. His for its, as usual.

12 The Poet not unfrequently thus uses how in the sense of by which.

Incline to it, or no?

Cant.

He seems indifferent;

Or, rather, swaying more upon our part
Than cherishing th' exhibiters 13 against us :
For I have made an offer to his Majesty, -
Upon our Spiritual Convocation,

And in regard of causes now in hand,
Which I have open'd to his Grace at large,
As touching France, to give a greater sum
Than ever at one time the Clergy' yet
Did to his predecessors part withal.

Ely. How did this offer seem received, my lord?
Cant. With good acceptance of his Majesty :
Save that there was not time enough to hear—
As, I perceived, his Grace would fain have done -
The several and unhidden passages 14

Of his true titles to some certain dukedoms,
And, generally, to the crown and seat of France,
Derived from Edward, 15 his great andfather.

Ely. What was th' impediment that broke this off?
Cant. The French ambassador upon that instant
Craved audience; and the hour, I think, is come
To give him hearing: is it four o'clock?

18 Exhibiters is movers, proposers, or prosecutors. So, in The Merry Wives, ii. 1, Mrs. Page says, "I'll exhibit a Bill in the Parliament for the putting-down of fat men."

14 The passages of his titles are the lines of succession by which his claims descend. Unhidden is open, clear. - JOHNSON.

15 Isabella, queen of Edward the Second, and mother of Edward the Third, was the daughter of Philip the Fair, of France. She was reputed the most beautiful woman in Europe, and was by many thought the wickedest. The male succession from her father expired in the person of her brother, Charles the Fair. So that, but for the exclusion of females, the French crown would have properly descended to her son.